Originally Posted by George Mills
Originally Posted by Evdberg
[quote=Ken]I run everything through a QSC 322 as I did with the Meridian gear.
This worries me the most. My experience is that it is not a good thing to proces the output of a Meridian processor with other gear, it will only degrade the quality. Also it is not quite clear to me why you would need it, as the 861 has MRC. Roomtune is very important to get great sound, so I would not just route this through the QSC and disable MRC.

I did find the QSC-322UA when I was hunting for the unit Ken "calibrates" with. But when I found it, I thought, this can't be it. Who would put an analog in/out Equalizer AFTER the Meridian master volume control (let alone after Merdian's best DACs). Not just for the reason of the loss in A to D and D to A. But you only want to do this on fixed level signals. You can't get fixed level analog signals out of an 861 (ADA might allow this and possibly work better with QSC). He also claims QSC does so much better than MRC so I would assume (and again that may be a wrong assumption) that he wants to use this glorious box for bass management yet he set the ADA to cross over at 80hz (that just doesn't make sense to me, you'd disable all bass management and let QSC do it). Having 2 boxes do bass management is asking for trouble. But perhaps he defeated bass managment in the QSC (even less reason to have it there). The Meridian outputs already have some "equalization" from MRC (that may have been defeated), Trifield (no wonder he didn't like it) and Hybrid Volume (which can behave differently at different volumes).

He really has a QSC system. With a Meridian or ADA "Source" (analog ones at that).

The only fair way to compare them is to take the QSC out.
And if they both sound like crap without QSC I think he has bigger issues.

My gut feeling was something was wrong and I suspect you nailed it.

His 861 probably isn't broken if anyone wants a bargain. [/quote]

I had the V4 for approximately 6 months before getting the QSC. The Meridian was much better with it and no MRC.

You are losing sight of the original post. It was that I preferred the ADA piece. Stop typing, put your money where your mouth is and go out and get one and see what you think? it is risk free. You get your money back if you don't like it. To just post and post without listening is absolutely. Stop focusing on the 861 and listen to the ADA. That's what the thread is about.

I don't know if you have children, but if they told you they didn't like something and you then asked them if they ever tried it and they said no. What would your reply to them be??
Ken

Meridian 861v6, HD621, G98, Pioneer BD-09, Mark Levinson 436 monoblocks, Aerial Acoustics 20T, CC5, SR3, SW12, Mark Seaton Submersives, QSC 322, Runco Vx22D, Lumagen Radiance XE